Lines of Flight 2
Deleuze and Bohemian Counterculture
No Destination
An understanding of modern counterculture, in the 20th century, the underground, the Bohemian, begins in the 19th century, with Henri Murger’s short stories, Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (1845), Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1876) and Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème (1896).
The life of the Bohemian exalted: artists, writers, musicians, actors, impoverished and marginalized, and in direct contrast with the mainstream and accepted high-end of culture.
Romani wanderers, adventurers, nomads. Anti-establishment. Free love. The life of the Bohemian is a line of flight with no pre-ordained arc or destination.
Choosing One’s Own Path
From Montmartre, la vie de bohème spread to the United States, and is, in the words of one famous Bohemian Club member:
To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment — to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind — to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none — to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art — this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect…
What, then, is it that makes this mystical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one’s own path, be one’s own self, live one’s own life. (Burgess, The Romance of the Commonplace)
To Go Underground
To go Bohemian is not to subscribe to a subculture that deviates with the mainstream, but otherwise has the same foundations.
It is to go underground, like those who stood up to the extremism of World War II, but culturally: to go underground is to resist and reject mainstream culture as tyrannical, and to create a line of flight away from it completely to a destination unknown.
By rejecting the majoritarian, the underground Bohemian has no foundation, only the overflowing desire to experience all of life.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
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Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2022 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
